Relations between burials and buildings in the Iron Age OF Southwest Norway RELATIONS BETWEEN BURIALS AND BUILDINGS IN THE IRON AGE OF SOUTHWEST NORWAY Barbro Dahl Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger
[email protected] ABSTRACT Recent archaeological excavations in Rogaland have revealed several cases of Late Iron Age (LIA) burials overlying Early Iron Age (EIA) buildings. In spite of a growing interest in the transition between the EIA and the LIA, there has been a ten- dency to treat burials and buildings separately, limiting discussions of the relationship between the two. The superimposition of burials over older buildings, understood as references to the past, can be seen as a characteristic pattern in the Scandinavian Viking Period. Presenting new sites, alongside a few well-known older excavations, and discussing common traits amongst them, I hope to develop new insights into Iron Age society. The most frequent burial-building combination is Viking burials associated with buildings from the Late Roman Iron Age/Migration Period. This may indicate that expansion in the period AD 150–550 played a special role in the Viking Period, and that the placing of Viking burials on Late Roman/Migration Period houses reflects disputes over land rights, more precisely the ownership of the farmyards from the Early Iron Age. BUILDINGS AND BURIALS understanding of the past (Connerton 1989), leads This chapter deals with the past in the past. In the us to the topic of social memory and how it supplies same way as today’s archaeologists work on the past the members of a society with an identity and a in our present (Shanks 2007: 591; Olsen 2010: 126), historical consciousness (Holtorf 1998: 24).